Homeless or Homeward Bound???: In by Christmas? Ummmm NO!

I left off with the sell of our house. It was bittersweet, this was a neighborhood that I had grown up in, this was the only house our dogs knew, I watched Kandis grow up in this house. We'd been through a few different neighbors, some I would miss and some I would never think of again. Either way it was time to say goodbye

My father-in-law very kindly offered to let us live with him while we built our dream home. I thought this was very generous since we have two dogs and a teenager. So far it hasn't been so bad, he talks to the dogs like they are people and sometimes I even expect them to answer him back. It is actually very sweet, especially since he calls them fellas and one of them is a girl!

When we got the offer on our house in the middle of July I contacted the loan officer who helped my mom and dad with the purchase of their new home. She was super sweet and I loved that she let me do everything through e-mail. I personally never set foot in her office until we closed, aproximately two and a half months and exactly seven grey hairs after the application was submitted! Let me tell you, I will never, ever do another construction loan. The lender we went through is established and we actually went through them for our first mortgage. They will remain nameless because we still have to deal with them until we close on the long term mortgage and they sell us off. If we were able to break ground the first week of September we would have been in by Christmas, well we broke ground on October 5th. Needless to say we will not be in by Christmas, I really didn't plan on spending the holidays in my father-in-laws unfinished basement. Oh well, what do you do? I truly have no desire to relive the nightmare we went through from the close of our old house to the close on the construction loan. Let me just tell you that it took five weeks, four trips to loan officers office for Mark, three failed faxes, two buyers for our property, and one angry letter to the bank president to close. And did I mention the seven grey hairs??

It looks like we will be moving in closer to Valentines Day, but there is a light at the end of our long tunnel. In the meantime I have to buy all new winter clothes since all of it was packed back in May when sweaters and thermals were something no one wanted to even think about wearing. Those boxes are at the back of the storage unit because anything that we weren't going to wear in the next six months got stored before the house was even listed. Grrrrr....

The footings were done on Monday the 9th and we hope to have the foundation poured by tomorrow or Friday. Realistically we should have it framed by the end of October. I have more confidence in that then I did during the whole closing process. We'll see...